


Between mountains light a lovely mile

by followbutterfly



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dark Charles, Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Not A Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 19:51:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10578336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/followbutterfly/pseuds/followbutterfly
Summary: Erik came to visit Charles in the mental hospital after the tragic accident. Set place in another timeline where Charles instituted the school and had already been a professor X.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The title came from Gerard Manley Hopskins's poem "My own heart let me more have pity on".

_Hello, Charles. It’s been a while. I’m glad to see you’re looking better. Don’t worry about the others. They’re well-settled. All of the school things have been good so far._

  
Erik recited the mental script in his head, while pacing in the living room waiting for Dr. MacTaggert to greet him and lead him to Charles.

  
His palms are sweating, he tried to shake the unsettling tremors in the mind. There’s nothing to be worried. There’s nothing to be _afraid_.

  
“Erik,” a female voice ringed his consciousness into the reality. Erik saw Dr. MacTaggert walked to him, reaching out the hand. “It’s good to see you again.”

He merely nodded. The voice cord was shut as if it had been ripped. His eyes met her, attempting the smile but failed to do.

  
Dr. Moira MacTaggert’s expression was full of concern but also understanding.

  
“It will be alright.” Dr. MacTaggert – Moira touched his arm with a trip of her fingers, but her gesture just reassured what Erik was afraid all along.

  
She led him to the hall room, and walked along the corridor to a big room at the end. There were not any other doors, only the one MacTaggert pressed the key card on it, neither are the windows.

  
As the door slide open, whispers, giggles, and talking, and chattering sounds promptly emerged. Erik walked behind Moira and glanced around the room. People in the light blue uniform gathering around, doing such “casual” activities. They were talking to one another, playing cards, reading books and also idling around talking to themselves.

  
Erik suppressed his feelings: the bitterness was coiling in his stomach. He didn’t dare to look for Charles, but suddenly Moira turned around and spoke to him.

  
“That’s him.”

  
A figure sitting in the corner of the room, far from the others. Erik was aware that Charles was so concentrated on something over the table, and after they walked towards him. It was an uncanny scenario. Charles was playing chess by himself.

  
“Hello, Charles.” It was Moira who broke the silence when they approached him and Charles didn’t seem to notice.

  
The man slowly looked up. He looked at his therapist with a childlike look, and then his blue eyes shift to see Erik. The face was brightened with a wide smile.

  
“Erik! It’s good to see you, my friend.” His voice was warm and seemed genuine, his eyes were beaming. Moira lead him to stand in front of the table but didn’t invite him to sit. She just gazed at the wall, looking award and frigid. After a pause, she decided it was acceptable to leave him with Charles alone.

  
“I’ll be back in 20 minutes, or you can call me anytime.” She forced a smile, and squeezing his shoulder, now this time the body language was from friend to friend.

  
Charles still looked at him with that innocent smile when Erik sat in front of him.

  
“You two are friends now, aren’t you?” he pointed out. “I remember you two can’t be fit in the same room without showing teeth and claws to each other.”

  
Erik tried to chuckle, “it had been 10 years. People can change.”

  
“Sure thing.” Charles sounded amused, “I hope that bond would be unbreakable.”

  
Erik’s body tensed. He said nothing. Charles curled his lips to form a word, but changed his mind to silence. He looked back to the chessboard and touched a pawn to play the next move. Erik had had been distracted by Charles’s smile and he didn’t see that Charles was playing chess with one hand, while the other was handcuffed with one leg of the table.

His heart sank. He forgot all the conversations he had been practicing all night and crippled by the nervousness. He couldn’t sleep, just to make sure this day he could overcome Charles and his vulnerability. He desperately need to surpass those sickening feelings and defeated it.

 

And by it – the meaning could be his demon and _Charles_. But now he started to realize all the effort would be in vain.

  
“So it’s been a while since the last time you visited me.” Charles was the one who started a conversation. “I’m glad you still want to see me.”

  
“Of course I do.” Erik, hesitantly take a Black rook and moved it. Charles chuckled, “It looks like and old days, you and me playing chess at the night in our room. And you know, we always know, it was like a foreplay to us.”

  
The shiver crept to Erik, but he didn’t take his eyes from the chessboard.

  
Charles, on the other hand, caught the bait.

  
“I knew it isn’t a proper time, but I always recalled our time together. It really helped me when I’m alone.” He paused, “actually it is a lot more helpful than a routine talk to Moira. I don’t know that you still feel the same way, but for me, those memories are keeping me alive.”

  
Erik tried harder to focus on the strategy, moving the queen and checkmate.

  
“You know, my friend. I—” A sudden pause. “I’ve always missed you.”

  
“I could call Moira at anytime,” said Erik, hoarsely, “ to make sure you take the pills.”

  
The expression on Charles’s face changed. Lashed by his words, he looked taken aback, and hurt like an animal on the cage, then he smiled, coyly. “How thoughtful of you, thank you. But I’ve already had it this morning.”

  
“I just wanted this conversation won’t be on those issues again.”

  
With a sad smile, Charles said,“point taken.”

  
Then Erik withdrew himself from the chess and was staring at Charles with the trembling hands.

  
“I come to see you because I have to remind you that there’s a chance—” he halted his breath. “The victims, those people, even are suffering, will be consoled, if you—”

  
“ _consoled?_ ” Charles raised his voice a little, his smile fading. “Why would I like to console those people?”

  
“Because it’s not you, Charles. Hank told me there’s the other side of you that broke out and torture them. A dark part is buried in your mind even though you’ve never admitted it. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  
“I’d die rather than believe I didn't kill those men.” Charles let out a sigh, not smiling this time. “I’m the one who killed and tortured 53 mean armed with guns and chemical weapon. Those bastards attacked the schools and killed half of my students, so I delivered them the most painful experience they couldn’t have imagined. And I still believed it’s worth my life in the prison. I think I’ve said all this at least three times in the court and you were there.”

  
“No one gets killed in that night. You’ve gone crazy and tortured the innocent men who come to the schools, seeking for a refuge. Some of them are mutants,” Erik tried to keep his voice low and steady even it was getting more difficult.

  
Charles sneered. He never made such a face before, and Erik just behold another side of the other man revealed in from of him, twisted, contempt and also collected. The traces of his childlike manners were gone.

  
Then he whispered, “they’re not innocent. As I told you, I wiped out the memories my students from everyone because I don’t want them to get hurt.”

  
“Why did you do that?”

  
“It’s better in that way.” said Charles, with a sad smile that made Erik’s heart clenched.

  
“I don’t understand. Your story—what’s the truth? Why did you just unleash those memories?”

  
“Because you, Hank and Raven would be wrecked, “ Charles said calmly. “Those students, as I used to mention are Scott, whom you liked to counsel and took him under you wing. Ororo, you don’t believe me but she’s got a crush on you, Jean, she’s a very talented and kind at heart, also Jubilee –”

  
“Enough,” Erik cut off.

  
Charles chuckled. “I told you. You wouldn’t believe it. No one would believe they existed. Quite lovely and energetic youths they once were.”

  
“I think I should leave,” Erik got up. At the moment Charles cocked his face to see him again, this time his gaze was intense.

  
“And you wouldn’t believe me either. That time I was using the Cerebro to kill those men, I just did what I consider the terrible thing -- something that I will not beg for forgiveness. But I was mad and empowered by the Cerebro and I thought what if I had no turning back, I would choose to do this.”

  
Erik felt like he was rooted to the ground. The chattering sound around them suddenly vanished, so did the surrounding.

  
Charles’s eyes met his, there was tears in his blue eyes. “I wiped out some of your memories. The part you were a terrorist, a mutant separatist, and a killer. And I took the liberties to do such unfair thing to you and the others. No one remembered Magneto.”

  
“And you’re proud to say that you’ve known me more than myself?”

  
There’s no arrogance in his voice, “I know everything about you, Erik.”

  
Finally this time, he got up from the chair. “I have a class in an hour.”

  
Charles, tears on his face, blinked as if had woken up to the reality. “I hoped to see you again, soon.”

  
Erik chose the silence as the answer and prepared to leave the room without looking at Charles. But something jerked out from his mind, like a wake-up call. A thought seized him in the midst way to the exit door and made his heart stop.

  
Moira warned him about Charles. She told her she suspected something unusual about him. Not the same kind of made up stories, but worse. And it was intangible things that, as a therapist, she couldn’t gasp what it was.

  
But someone who had been with the other for over ten years as Erik, that was different and terrifying. Slowly, Erik turned to face Charles and said,

  
“We had this conversation before. The last time I had visited you.”

  
Charles sat very still on the chair like he being turned into the stone. His expression was blank, and his eyes were gazing attentively at the chessboard.

  
Erik waited until Charles let out his breath, “yes, we did.”

  
“You didn’t take pills?”

  
Again, the pretentious chuckle was noticeable. “No. I have pills two times a day, even the injection from time to time, if they considered I’m hard to put down, but somehow it didn’t work for me anymore. My telepathy grows even stronger when it is being suppressed.”

  
His instinct was right all along. Erik always knew that he couldn’t defeat Charles. He will return to do this, again and again, coming to see him, playing chess and talking about this nonsense.

  
Charles smiled.

  
_It’s the only way I can do to hold on to you._ He responded to Erik’s thoughts in his mind. I _don’t want to use my power to force you, but I can wipe out your memories in each time we’ve met. So you will come to visit me again someday. If this time counted, you guessed about my power right three times straight._

  
Erik’s fists were clenching. He felt like he couldn’t remember how to breathe. He was such a fool.

  
“Goodbye, Charles.”

  
Briefly, there was a flash of burst out feeling in Erik’s head, coming from Charles, mixed of sadness, guilt, regret and--

  
_I love you, my friend. I always have. Nothing could change that._

  
The demon was roaring and clawing inside of him, crying for the triumph. Erik walked towards the door and never looked back again.


End file.
